Samenvatting
Many transportation improvement projects near wetlands, such as bridge replacement, road widenings, geometric changes to improve safety, or roadway realignments, involve unavoidable but small impacts to streams and wetlands. For unavoidable wetland impacts of five acres or less, it is difficult to purchase a parcel adjacent to the project area or within the watershed to mitigate the wetland loss, leading to high project costs and potential project delays. A mechanism for paying a fee to an established wetland in lieu of building a small and (probably ineffective) mitigation site would be advantageous. This paper considers the need for cooperative wetlands mitigation in Iowa and activities to advance toward this goal.